


not from the absence of violence (but despite the abundance of it)

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Brief Smut, Canon-Typical Violence, Catholic Guilt, Falling In Love, Flashbacks, Former Priest!Nicky, Getting Together, Historical, Hurt/Comfort, Likely Historical Inaccuracies, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Movie, Story Time with Uncle Nicky, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:06:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25640290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Nicky and Nile have some time to themselves while Joe and Andy are out on a mission; Nicky, always the quiet one, finds himself willingly telling his new family member the story of how he came to realize that he loved Joe, the man whom he had been taught to hate:Because it was conviction that brought him to the gates of Jerusalem, a thousand years ago. And it is that conviction which is shaken over and over again with the kindness, the strength, the absolute virtue of Yusuf Al-Kaysani. This unwavering love introduces a period of a thousand years where Niccolò (who becomes Nico who becomes Nicky) discovers time and again that most truth in this world deserves to be questioned.-Except of course the truth of how much Nicky loves Joe.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 71
Kudos: 1065





	not from the absence of violence (but despite the abundance of it)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again!!!
> 
> Here is a quick one-shot that I wrote today while deep in my Joe/Nicky feelings as I was considering all of the misconceptions/beliefs that you would develop/shed/develop over a thousand years.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!
> 
> _notes_  
>  *The poem Yusuf recites to Niccolò is from Abu Nuwas, an Arabic poet who wrote homoerotic poetry in the 8th and 9th century  
> *I don't speak Italian (especially the old Genoese Nicky would speak) or Arabic, so either Google translate cleared up the spelling of something, or I just said it in English and tagged it as being in the other language!  
> *I also am not a historian - most historical details are from google!
> 
> **warnings**  
>  **TW: Homophobia** \-- Nicky considers the homophobic teachings of the Catholic Church, which were becoming the New Hot Thing around the time of his immortality beginning (as in, at first it was punishable if clergy engaged in sodomy, and then it was punishable if laypeople did)  
> Continued, **internalized homophobia** Nicky struggles with his attraction to men (a man in particular)  
> Blasphemy (would it be a Nicky fic that I wrote without blasphemy)  
> Temporary character death -- vaguely described burns/broken bones, **tw: blood**  
>  Cursing  
> Smut (at the end, pretty easy to skip if it's not for you)

“You must, like, know everything. Right?”

Nile asks him this casually one night while they eat canned ravioli in front of Jeopardy (Nile Freeman, glorious warrior, beautiful soul, Nicky loves her so so so much already because there is so _much_ to her).

Nicky pokes at his soggy ravioli glumly while tilting his head with a smile. “I would not say everything.”

“You’ve gotten every single answer right.” Nile pokes him with a socked foot and she smiles at him teasingly when he looks over.

(He’d had a sister, dozens of lifetimes ago. Maria. So beautiful. So kind. So dead)

“Maybe they are easy questions.” He smiles back and pops a lukewarm ravioli in his mouth and forces himself to chew and swallow. 

His face must not conceal his feelings as well as it normally does because Nile laughs at him. “Man, I have never seen _anyone_ hate Chef Boyardee the way you do. This is like … visceral hatred.”

“It’s good.” Nicky smiles, half the ravioli still lingering in his mouth; he swallows that too, hating the gummy, metallic taste of it. “Mmm.”

She had offered to make dinner. It would have been rude to say no.

“Well, if that’s the case, I have dessert, too!” Nile bounces up and grabs a package of cookies from her grocery bag; she tosses them to him before sitting back down, a bright smile on her face.

“Milanos,” Nicky reads aloud doubtfully; he weighs the package, crisp white square, in his hand. “These look … edible.”

“I wanted to give you a real Italian dinner!” She looks so earnest, and it makes Nicky’s chest ache with love. 

He cracks the package open and pops a dry, cold cookie into his mouth. He chews - they are not so bad as the evil raviolis, he thinks - and swallows, giving her a smile that surely has crumbs stuck in it. “Delicioso.”

Nile nods eagerly and he takes another cookie and chews again demonstratively as Trebek reads out the next answer.

“Who is - _Giacomo Cassanova,_ ” Nicky answers, spraying pieces of ‘Milano’ everywhere; mortified, he covers his mouth and swallows. 

“Aren’t you going to finish your ravioli?” Nile asks, tapping his first bowl towards him.

“Mhm.” Nicky grabs the bowl and stabs a ravioli as though he is impaling a soldier of the Church coming for his Yusuf once more. “Grazzi, Nile.”

He makes himself eat another sad packet of noodle and what might be meat, and then Nile groans and hits him in the face with a throw pillow.

“Cazzo!” Nicky swears and dodges the pillow on the upswing. “Why?”

“Joe said that would _at least_ be fun!” Nile says grumpily. “You didn’t even complain!”

“Joe said what?”

“He said to make you the shittiest possible version of Italian food. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up on Chef Boyardee, but after that fancy pasta thing you made last week-”

“Tagliatelle al ragù,” Nicky supplies, deeply offended. _It wasn’t even that fancy of a dish,_ he wants to say. He refrains.

“Yeah, that, I thought you’d be a little snobby about your food! Joe said you definitely were.”

“Joe was wrong,” Nicky sniffs indignantly, poking at his bowl of lumpy carbohydrates.

“Really?”

Nicky stares at the couch for a second before quietly admitting, “No.”

Nile hits him with the pillow again, and Nicky snorts, setting his bowl down to grab a pillow as a shield. “Why didn’t you say something?” Nile demands, punctuating her words with strikes.

“Because you made dinner and I did not wish to upset you!” Nicky cries, trying futilely to defend himself. “Calmati, Cristo--”

They both laugh as they settle back down, and they return their attention to Jeopardy, Nile shooting him daggered looks and making his smile linger to the point his cheeks actually ache.

“What is Nicosia,” Nicky says serenely, picking a crumb of Milano off the coach and throwing it to the floor. This particular safehouse in Maine comes with a cat, who might be interested in such a dry morsel.

 _“What is, Famagusta, Alex._ ”

“Ha!” Nicky snorts.

 _“Correct!”_ Alex says.

“Bullshit!” He jabs a finger at the screen. “The Siege of Famagusta was long after Nicosia, goddamnit! The Holy League was well on its way to-”

Nile bursts out laughing, and Nicky turns to her, still incensed. “What?”

“I have no idea what you just said,” she laughs. “It was just a bunch of angry Italian -- thought you were going to throw the Chef at the TV.”

Nicky snorts at that and knocks his shoulder into Nile’s. “I would not do that to the TV.”

“For a guy who says he doesn't know everything, you sure are ready to pick a fight with everyone's favorite Canadian grandpa over a simple fact check.”

“Some things are facts, and I lived through enough to know certain facts,” Nicky points out. “But that does not mean I know everything.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Much of immortality is really discovering how little I actually know.” Nicky knows his smile is pained now, and Nile grabs the remote to mute the television. 

They’re alone at the safehouse -- Joe and Andy went into Canada on some sort of business for Copley, and Nicky and Nile stayed behind. Nicky always gets horribly tense when Joe is gone (worse since Merrick, so much worse since Merrick, God, he’ll vibrate out of his skin until Joe comes back in one piece to kiss him once more), so he knows Nile is doing her best to distract him.

“How long did that sort of ‘immortal lesson’ take to set in?”

“Oh, about … twenty-five deaths,” he jokes. She lifts an eyebrow. “To be fair, the first … fifteen of those were in a handful of weeks outside the Holy City. Eight of them were Joe.”

Now both her eyebrows are up. “Yikes.”

“Yes.” Nicky laughs bitterly. “Yikes.” _I killed him twelve times,_ he does not say. _I was so much more afraid than he was. I still am._

“Is it because there really is that much to see?” Nile tilts her head and frowns at him.

“Yes,” he grabs his open beer and takes a sip. “And no.”

“Wanna explain?” She digs her toes into his lean thigh and smiles at him when he looks over. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

“I guess we do.” Nicky nods and stares at the muted television. “I think … the best way I could describe it is that … I know now, that things exist on a … sliding scale of correctness. There’s rarely _true._ So I discover things and learn that what I thought before was not true.”

There is only one truth for him now; if he thinks hard enough, he can recall a time at his mother’s knee where that truth was God. But, if the past nine hundred years have taught him anything, it is that man’s understanding of God is, at best, incomplete. His knowledge of sin, therefore, is just as incomplete.

Nile clears her throat and brings him back to the present slightly. “Like what Booker said, about you guys being good or bad depending on the century?”

“Yes.” Nicky feels himself drawn inward, like he’s looking at his body through a periscope. “Like that.”

“Nicky?”

“My first death was shameful,” Nicky says, feeling the grief of it still high in his throat. “Many of my first deaths were. We … had no business being there.”

Nicky remembers unlearning the truth of his Church vividly.

“If you wanna talk about it … I’m here to listen.” Nile’s smile is infinitely kind, Nicky thinks. Like a Madonna. There is light within her soul.

He prays she will never lose it.

“I would rather not talk about the sack of Jerusalem,” Nicky begins and Nile nods evenly, like she’d expected as much. “But … I can tell you about … how me and Joe became … me and Joe?”

Nile nods enthusiastically. “Yes please.”

“I had to learn that a truth was not true on the way,” Nicky says, picking at the label of his beer. “Luckily, my Yusuf has always been patient…”

* * *

Around the same time that Anselm of Canterbury called his council in London to declare sodomy a sin, Niccolò di Genova sought out those who learned the language of the people whose home they had invaded on their quest for the Church.

When he first sailed to the Holy Land in 1098, he was told that his sins would be forgiven if he died on the battlefield in the name of his God. 

Niccolò died perfectly well. He did not know what bargain was struck over his soul as it was weighed before San Pietro, but at some point in the calculations, he was spat back out. He had since lived to sin many, many times after that original death.

The twelfth century began and Niccolò unlearned the truth of his glorious cause at the same time he learned unfamiliar vowels and new shapes to his mouth. It took him a stumbling, horrible decade to master the language, and when he emerged, some twelve years after he first fell in sight of the walls of Jerusalem, Niccolò was no longer a _Milites Christi;_ nor was he a priest.

He worried, sometimes, that he was no longer a man, but that fear began long before he dreamed of dark brown eyes (and two women, always two women, but he had never seen their faces and his dreams of them were _different_ than Niccolò’s dreams of _him_ ).

Distracted by an outbreak of disease in the land he was born in, Niccolò did not make his way to Jerusalem again for many years - when Baldwin received approval from Callixtus to sail to the Holy Land once more, Niccolò made his way to Venice to join the expedition.

There were promises of remission once more; such sweet indulgences were sworn to him as he picked up his sword once more. He smiled thinly at these forgeries of faith and stayed mostly in his own mind as they sailed to Corfu. He died several times, rarely lifting his sword except to stop some atrocity or another. Baldwin was captured, the great blubbering idiot, and then it was on to Jaffa. They fought on their ships when a Fatimid fleet approached, and Niccolò fell into water stained so red with blood that historians would write about it for an age.

He woke on the beach with other corpses spat back out by the sea. Standing on shaking legs, he cursed when he saw the beach littered with Genoese, Franks, and Arab soldiers. The closest corpse to him had curling, dark hair and tan skin, and Niccolò vomited until the water that poured from him is no longer pink nor made of salt, and then he cried because his fool’s errand had led him here, to this beach, on the unjust side of a war once again.

 _And for what?_ He thought to himself as he staggered across the beach; men moaned in their dying breaths, and Niccolò, now fifty-four years old in the body that never reached thirty, Niccolò who had died more times than he cared to count, stopped at the side of an Egyptian who could not be older than twenty, his side mangled, eyes dazed.

He spoke to Niccolò in his own language, not realizing who he was, or what colors he wore.

Niccolò threw his sword down and knelt at the side of the dying boy. “It will be alright,” he promised clumsily in Arabic. “Dying is not so bad.”

He thought this was a hard promise to make to someone who would not wake back up, but he held the boy’s hand and spoke to him as soothingly as he could until his breath no longer moved. Niccolò wiped at unexpected tears, dragging sand and sea into his eyes, and his mouth stumbled clumsily over the Ṣalāt al-Janāzah, which one of his tutors had carefully taught him years and years ago.

Knowing that this wasn’t enough, that he needed to bury these people for the prayer to be proper, Niccolò gazed down the beach and repeated the prayer anyway, his breath catching in a sob as his own blood, wetted from the sea, dripped into his eyes from an already healed wound. He prayed for them in Genoese as well, finishing quietly with “perpetual light will shine on you forevermore-”

He stopped. There was an unexpected echo when he spoke.

Niccolò felt as though he were in a dream; he turned his head and saw the man who had haunted him for twenty-five years, smiling at him as though sharing a private joke.

“You-” he gasped out; he left his sword in the sand as he stood once more.

“You learned Arabic?” The man’s voice was as beautiful as Niccolò could recall, even if he had heard it so rarely when not raised in a furious shout. “May I ask why?”

“For you,” Niccolò answered immediately, too unabashed in his old age to lie. “I learned it for you.”

He paused and took an unsteady breath before something hit him. “You spoke Genoese,” he said, eyes widening. “Just now.”

“I suppose I did.” The man still smiled as though this were a wonderful joke. 

“Yusuf,” Niccolò said weakly. The name was all he had these past decades; the name, the memory of his eyes, the outline of his face. “Why did you learn Genoese?”

“For you,” Yusuf answered easily. “I learned it for you.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, and then Niccolò glanced down at his sword. “Should we kill each other?” He asked. “For old times’ sake?”

Yusuf laughed brightly, and Niccolò felt as though he were staring into the sun. “We should get off this beach instead,” Yusuf suggested lightly, touching Niccolò’s arm with a gentleness he had not felt since he took his vows. “Before someone comes to loot the bodies.”

“I wish we could bury them.”

Yusuf’s gaze was soft then, and Niccolò averted his eyes, wondering if he would think him weak. “I wish so too, Niccolò,” Yusuf murmured. “But we must move on.”

They walked down a winding path together, away from the sea; Niccolò wanted to strip his armor and throw it into the nearest ditch, but after peeling the layer emblazoned with the cross from his body, Yusuf stopped him. 

“You might need all that.”

“Why?” Niccolò retorted. “We cannot die.”

“That does not mean I wish to watch you die more than I have to.”

He had not considered this; lost for further words, Niccolò nodded and continued on. 

They found shelter for the night off the road, in a small copse of trees that provided sufficient cover from prying eyes. Niccolò did not think any would be traveling this road at this time - it was too small, the upcoming battle too far away. They ate bread that Yusuf miraculously procured, and brought water from a nearby stream to drink deeply.

(Niccolò offered Yusuf the last of his wine that had survived his fall into the ocean, but after Yusuf kindly reminded him that he would not drink alcohol, he threw the wineskin away as though it had personally offended him. Yusuf rolled his eyes at the gesture, an expression so intensely frustrating that it only endeared him to Niccolò even more)

They turned to stories as their fire grew dim, and Niccolò watched the stars wheel and blaze overhead as Yusuf told tales of his childhood in Egypt, his dreams of being a scholar.

“I was never much good at school,” Niccolò admitted to the constellations, as though Cassiopeia would hear it and not mock him. “It takes me a long time to learn things.”

“That can’t be true.” 

Yusuf’s voice was achingly kind and warmer than the embers of their fire; Niccolò, so cold in the evening air, wished, nonsensically, that he could wear Yusuf’s voice like a cloak around his shoulders. He would never be cold again.

“It took me over ten years to learn Arabic.” Niccolò turned his head to watch Yusuf’s reaction, and his heart throbbed in his chest like an open wound because he was so lovely in the moonlight, lovely and solid and _here,_ God in Heaven, Yusuf was here, and Niccolò wanted to be over _there_ with him and not _here_ on the wrong side of their fire. 

He wanted and he could not have - he was still viscerally shocked that God in his mercy had even let him have this much.

Yusuf’s beard hid the edges of his smile, but his eyes twinkled in the silver starlight. “You might need another ten years, habibi.”

“Habibi,” Niccolò tested the word out, not noticing how Yusuf’s shoulders suddenly tensed. “I do not know that word.”

“You will learn it.” Yusuf’s voice was thicker now, and Niccolò looked back at him with a curious smile. “It is time for sleep.”

“Sleep.” Niccolò sighed and looked back to the constellations. “I do not know what I will dream of tonight.”

“Oh?”

“I dreamt of you so often.” Niccolò’s eyes widened as he realized what that must sound like, and he lifted half-off his cloak to stammer an explanation. “Strange dreams,” he said hastily, “I dreamed of - of women too-”

 _My dreams of women were of fighting,_ he was afraid to say, _my dreams of you were of longing._

“I dreamed of you too,” Yusuf admitted, and their eyes linger on each other for a long time. 

“Sleep well, Yusuf,” Niccolò whispered when the fire was all but out.

“And you too.”

“Habibi,” Niccolò sounded the word out again, smiling at the soft inhale from Yusuf. “Did I say it right?”

“You said it perfectly.” They said nothing more, but Niccolò knew that it was a good kind of quiet, one from trust and exhaustion and relief.

Niccolò did not dream that night; not of the women, and not of Yusuf and his broad hands and kind eyes. When he woke, his life remained better than a dream, and he felt, finally, at peace.

* * *

It continued in this way for several months. 

They traveled together, laughing and trading stories, Yusuf’s Genoese becoming terribly better, Niccolò’s Arabic becoming … marginally so (Yusuf was much kinder to Niccolò about his mastery of language than Niccolò would ever be to himself, but Yusuf, in general, was kinder). 

Sometimes they made use of their swords, but really only to settle skirmishes and to help people along their way. 

“Where will we go?” Niccolò had asked one evening as Yusuf rolled up the mat he used for prayer. 

(Something tugged at Niccolò’s mind, the fact that Yusuf still believed and worshipped and praised his God so fully, when Niccolò was locked in a bitter war between resentment and fear)

“Anywhere.” Yusuf did not seem as vexed by the road before them. “Maybe a nice town to spend a few years in. Away from the fighting and the blood and the shit.”

Niccolò did not like the darker tone creeping into Yusuf’s voice, so he touched his arm lightly and drew his attention away from whatever grief lingered inside his mind.

“I would like that,” he said, and Yusuf’s eyes brightened as he smiled.

They found lodging in the outskirts of Aleppo, and settled into life as easily as a Christian and a Muslim living together really could. Their arrangement drew some suspicion, but Niccolò felt assured that whatever gift of immortality given to them would outlast any attempts to slaughter one or both of them.

It did not stop his eyes from wandering; when Yusuf stepped out of the bath, when he rose in the morning to pray before the sun had risen, when he smiled or laughed or did anything remotely clever: these were the times where Niccolò felt his body stir in a way that should be reserved for women (and even that stirring he had renounced when he took his vows), and still Yusuf shone brighter than an entire galaxy of stars.

There had long been the thought that the earth sat at the middle of all things, as God intended. Niccolò had read the theories, seen the drawings, considered the catechism to support this. He had never paid the thought much attention. Until Yusuf.

For God must have intended the universe to center on one particular point for a reason: and now, with Yusuf sleeping near him, with Yusuf smiling upon him, with Yusuf, always _Yusuf_ \-- Niccolò at last understood why God might have ordained the earth as the center of all his Creation.

He was simply waiting for Yusuf to appear.

(This thought was blasphemy of course; Niccolò had sworn oaths decades ago to the name of Christ, the most important thing in all of Christendom being the Church. But here in Yusuf’s eyes he was remade, and he could not find the strength to atone)

* * *

Yusuf still told the most wonderful stories, even after a year together.

Niccolò’s stories paled in comparison, all of them stories of the Bible, some versions of which Yusuf had already learned; but Yusuf had traveled where Niccolò had gone to seminary, had seen the world where Niccolò was taught to hate it (by this point, he had learned that what his bishop had called _a love for neighbor that drives oneself to wish to help them_ secretly meant _change them until they follow you and if they will not, destroy them_ ). 

Yusuf was a scholar, prone to effusive speech and poetic language. Niccolò often struggled to string together more than five sentences at a time.

One evening, Yusuf recited poetry to him while he was sated with wine, his body heavy and relaxed although the drunkenness had faded from his system so quickly; Niccolò was reclined with his head in Yusuf’s lap - not an uncommon position for them, given the intensity of their friendship - as Yusuf’s fingers pulled through the strands of his hair.

As he let his eyes close in bliss, he paid closer attention to the beautiful words flowing from Yusuf in his native tongue. His mind tried clumsily to translate it:

 _“I die of love for him, perfect in every way, Lost in the strains of wafting music. My eyes are fixed upon his delightful body. And I do not wonder at his beauty._ ”

Niccolò’s breath caught when he heard the words, and Yusuf’s fingers stilled in his hair.

“What is it?” He murmured in Genoese.

“The poem.” Niccolò frowned. “Who wrote it?”

Yusuf resumed stroking Niccolò’s hair. “A man who lived hundreds of years ago.”

Niccolò’s face burned, his eyes the worst of all. “But ... it was about a man.”

“Your Arabic is getting better.”

It made him smile a little, but he caught Yusuf’s forearm; it stilled above him, and Niccolò cleared his throat painfully. “But it is a love poem?”

“More than that. It’s erotic.” Yusuf sounded amused, but Niccolò’s heart was pounding. He thought he might be sick.

Niccolò sat up slowly, and Yusuf moved his arm out of the way to make room for him.

“What happened to him?” He asked, staring at the packed dirt floor of their small home. “The man who wrote the poem?”

“He was imprisoned during the Abbasid Civil War.” Yusuf no longer sounded amused.

“Because he loved men?” Niccolò knew he would be sick now.

Yusuf’s fingers brushed against Niccolò’s back, and he shivered brutally. Yusuf pulled away. 

_No,_ he wanted to say. _No, I do not flinch from your touch - I flinch from what might be done to you if I do not flinch away._

“Not quite. Because he liked to drink.” 

“But he published his poems,” Niccolò said slowly. “Everyone knew …”

“Yes.”

Niccolò closed his eyes so tightly he thought the sun was rising; it was only the blood red behind his eyelids from how hard he tried to hide from the truth. 

“They would kill me,” Niccolò said, grieved. “If I wrote such a poem.”

“Luckily you are not a poet.” Yusuf reached out to him again, but Niccolò jerked his arm away, wanting Yusuf to hold him, not wanting to damn them both more than they had already been damned. “Luckily you cannot die.”

“Can’t we?” Niccolò muttered. He gripped his hair and pulled, trying to clear his thoughts. “What if we can?”

“Nico.” A pet name, and Niccolò shuddered again at how badly he wanted it. “Nico, look at me.”

“I do.” Niccolò could no longer claim the excuse of the drink anymore; his immortality had cleared that of his system entirely. Now he felt cold, naked, like a newborn babe. 

He turned his face towards Yusuf, who sat as still as a statue behind him, but he did not open his eyes. “I look at you all the time. Yusuf.”

The next two words were his undoing:

“I know.”

Niccolò stood and dragged his hands through his hair, heaving. “I am sorry,” he choked out. “Christ, you cannot know how sorry I am-”

“Nico, look at me!”

Niccolò could not. Not when Yusuf knew the truth of him. “It is a sin,” he sobbed, “I know it is a sin, and I … I have dishonored you with my thoughts.”

“What thoughts?” Yusuf’s voice grew desperate, and he grabbed Niccolò’s arm harshly. “Niccolò. Niccolò!”

“I cannot send you to Hell with me,” Niccolò choked out, turning to stare at Yusuf. Yusuf’s eyes - still so kind, so bright, so _hurt_ \- “for my transgressions. I will - I will go.”

Yusuf swore. “Like Hell you will-”

“Leave me!” Niccolò shouted, pushing Yusuf’s arms away clumsily. He took a step backwards and then turned and fled.

His legs were longer than Yusuf’s, and he had never taken off his shoes after returning from town - Yusuf shouted after him, trying to follow, no doubt tearing his bare feet apart over the rocks (another reason for Niccolò to hate himself), but Niccolò ran faster, to the edge of town, past that, until road ran out and it was only to the stars that he could howl.

* * *

He stayed away for four days.

He felt like Christ in the desert, wandering in the days before his death - no matter how far he ran, all he could see was Yusuf’s face, agonized and hurt, so hurt by Niccolò’s sins. 

Niccolò fell to his knees after dying the second time of exposure and clung to a shrub as though it would burst into holy flame and speak to him as God once spoke to Moses all those years ago through his Angel.

But no Angel appeared; no voice assuring Niccolò that he was the God of his fathers before him. No answers swept towards him in the arid wind. He wept bitterly, his skin cracked, lips bleeding, and dropped his forehead to the dust.

“Perdonami,” he begged, beyond all tears but still weeping. “Perdonami.”

Still unable to shake the image of Yusuf from his mind, Niccolò rolled over in the dirt and screamed into the sky. He did not realize for several minutes that he was screaming in rage.

“I love him!” He screamed over and over again. He stood, shaking and raged against God in Heaven. “I love him - so _fuck_ you!” 

Again and again he trembled and swore until all he had left again was apology; falling to his knees one last time, Niccolò realized the terrible truth: it was not God’s forgiveness he sought.

Once, he had brought a sword to the gates of Jerusalem under the pretense of justice - now he brought a sword to the gates of his heart for much the same reason. 

He pushed himself up from the dirt - up from the ashes once more, the dust could not yet reclaim him - and returned home.

* * *

It was home he found in ashes when he returned.

Their little community, burnt to the ground, by who or what powers he did not know. There had been reports of bandits in the area, and he and Yusuf had laughed, oh how they had joked, about whether or not they should challenge them to some sort of fight.

(Yusuf joked about how funny it would be if one of them had their head removed, only for the other to pop it back into place until they gasped back to life. Niccolò had smiled, but only for a moment, and only after it was clear that he did not find the idea of Yusuf bleeding to be funny in the least)

Niccolò stood in the still smouldering foundations of the first place he had called home since he was only a boy, and stared out across the smoking ruins. 

“Yusuf?” He called out, shakily, when words returned to him. “Yusuf, are you here?”

His fear intensified when he caught sight of metal trapped under rubble; he bent down and cleared it away, pulling free Yusuf’s scimitar. Not three feet away from it was a foot. 

“Yusuf?” Niccolò’s mouth shaped his name, but no sound came. “Yusuf.” He scrambled across the debris on hands and knees, his shoulder slamming into the heavy stones that obscured the rest of the body. Slowly, he uncovered a shin, twisted and broken. “Yusuf, please.”

No response. 

“Fuck.” Niccolò began to dig in earnest now, his hands burning from the lingering heat. “Fucking - Yusuf, please, please answer me.” He shouted in Arabic now, as he tried to push the largest of the stones out of the way. “Yusuf - don’t leave me, Yusuf, please, do not leave me here.”

A horrible inversion of their fight five nights ago.

“Yusuf.” He pushed harder, screaming as he felt tendons pop and muscles tear, but at last the stone gave way.

Niccolò gagged at the smell of burnt flesh but kept digging. Finally, he managed to clear away the stones from Yusuf’s body, and he sobbed brokenly as he pulled away the debris on Yusuf’s face -

It was no longer handsome, but burned and broken, and Niccolò retched, sobbing through his nausea and fear.

_This was punishment for his rage against God - God had given him a gift, Niccolò had asked for more, and now God was punishing him by killing the man he loved._

No. He would not accept this; he would not walk this earth without Yusuf.

“You will heal,” he demanded, putting his hands to Yusuf’s neck; it was clearly broken, and he was not yet breathing. “Goddamnit, Yusuf, you will heal. Breathe, damn you!” He slapped at his chest angrily and then hauled his body into his lap, sobbing through his broken mixture of Arabic and Genoese. “Yusuf, please, don’t leave me here.

“Destati,” he begged, kissing the matted curls on his beloved’s head. “Destati, Yusuf, destati-”

Yusuf coughed raggedly as he wheezed through his first breath.

“God.” Niccolò looked away to hide his tears. “Oh God-”

He had never felt gratitude more consuming, more overpowering.

“Niccolò,” Yusuf gasped, “Ni-”

“Save your breath,” Niccolò whispered, smoothing his hands through the healing scabs on Yusuf’s lovely face. “Save your breath, habibi. I am going to take care of you.”

Niccolò kissed Yusuf’s forehead, then his nose, and finally his lips; he sobbed again when Yusuf lifted a still broken hand and pressed it to his cheek, holding him in place as he returned this perfect, holy kiss.

* * *

“I knew then that it was a mistake,” Nicky finishes, rubbing his thumb over the opening to his beer bottle. “The Church is made of humans, after all, and humans cannot always be right. They were wrong about my love for Yusuf.”

“Wow,” Nile whispers. “And you’ve been together since?”

“We have been together since,” he confirms, looking over to her with a smile. To his surprise, she has tears in her eyes. He tsks and holds an arm open. “Bambina.”

“I’m fine.” Nile sniffs but lowers herself into Nicky’s side anyway. “Just - holy shit. You two went through so much. How … how do you handle it? Seeing each other…”

“It was the first time I had seen Yusuf dead since I realized I loved him. Since I realized God had made me for him.” Nicky sighs through his nose. “I hate that it took his death for me to realize that loving him was not a sin. I like to think that if it had taken an extra decade with no death, I would have come to the same conclusion about how wrong I was.”

Nile is quiet, and Nicky knows what she must be thinking: will there be someone for her in the world.

Andy had Quynh, but lost her. Nicky has Joe, and will find oblivion if the same happens to them and Joe is taken. But Booker …

“Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another,” Nicky quotes. Although he is no longer a priest, he cannot forget the catechism on which he was raised. 

“That’s John.” As always, the glint of a gold cross hangs off Nile’s neck.

“Mhm.” Nicky kisses the top of Nile’s head. “If I had remembered it a little more clearly, and had ignored that which taught me to go against it … I would have realized sooner that my love for Joe was not a sin. But now I love him, and he loves me.”

He squeezes Nile’s shoulder. “And we love you, Nile.” He looks down at her and offers her a small, genuine smile, and she smiles back. “We are your family, and we will love you until the end of our time. I think, maybe, that is the greatest thing we can do.”

They don’t have much to say after that, and Andy and Joe return from their mini-job to discover them curled up on the couch, a blanket thrown over Nile because she had fallen asleep after a half-hour of quiet contemplation.

“Shh.” Nicky winks at his love as he approaches, face soft as he looks down at the sleeping Nile. 

“Here.” Andy grabs a beer from the fridge and then taps Nicky on the shoulder. “Swap out.”

“I’m good here, boss.”

Andy quirks an eyebrow at him, and Nicky snorts, obliging her as he slides out from underneath Nile; Andy slots herself in easily, shushing Nile when she startles awake.

“Goodnight,” Joe calls to Andy as they walk to their bedroom; Andy gives a dismissive hand wave, her head already leaning on the back of the couch, well on her way to sleep. 

“How was your night?” Joe murmurs, crowding in to kiss Nicky immediately.

He lets himself enjoy it for a moment, trading familiar, warm kisses with Joe. “Mmm,” he hums into the kiss, eyes closed drowsily. “Good. The kid made something delicious for dinner.”

“Did she now?” Even if Nile hadn't ratted Joe out, Nicky would be able to hear Joe’s shit-eating smile from a kilometer away, the beautiful asshole.

“Mhm. Something by a famous chef…” Nicky purses his lips and pulls back from the kiss, squinting like he’s trying to remember. “Boyee? Boyarda?”

Joe lapses into barely contained giggles, and Nicky nips at his nose and lips, pretending to consume him (and he has wanted to before, and he _has_ before, and he will again) before kissing him in earnest.

“You owe me a nice dinner,” he says to his love, his fingers slipping over the ticklish spot right under Joe’s lower right rib.

“What a hardship,” Joe mutters back, kissing him fiercely. 

They tumble to the bed, but, as is not unusual after so long an intimacy, their kisses gentle into easy brushes of mouths, of hands tracing circuits with well-traveled destinations.

“I told Nile the story of how we got together. How I realized I was in love with you,” Nicky admits when they are both bare to each other, warm under the blanket. Only their feet, their hands, their foreheads touch.

“Did she like the story?”

“The story would have sounded better from you,” Nicky says, brushing his lips over Joe’s perfect nose. “But don’t worry, you sounded good in it.”

“Hm.” Joe snorts, his fingers tripping down Nicky’s abdomen; he relishes the feeling and lets his eyes roll back into his head for a moment as Joe grips him.

“You always do,” Nicky says softly, and Joe’s hand stills. “You are so good, Yusuf.” He kisses him deeply, and twists his hand between him so he can take Joe into his palm as well. “Habibi.”

They kiss quietly, barely moving their hands, pressing together and falling apart like a tide under a forgiving moon.

“There was a poem,” Nicky says suddenly, “but I could barely remember it. It sounded so beautiful when you said it, Yusuf.”

“Niccolò,” Joe breathes in response, and their thoughts are lost to kisses that tangle and spread outside of any boundary of time.

“Will you say it to me?” Nicky asks when they resume stroking each other, feeling shy (a rarity in their bed).

Joe gathers them both up in his hand, and Niccolò breathes shallowly, burying his face in Joe’s arm, stretched beneath his head as they roll their hips together.

 _Please,_ Niccolò almost says, _please have mercy on me_ \- but Yusuf requires no prayer, no plea for intercession. He is just, and he is kind, and he has been the guiding light to Nicky’s belief for so long that Nicky trusts him to care for him in ways that even he cannot predict needing.

And Nicky has learned to trust himself to love Joe the way he should: endlessly, without boundary, without need for contrition. 

Slowly, Joe moves his hand over their joined flesh, and Nicky’s breath hitches as he runs his fingers up and down Joe’s body, treasuring each touch, each skipped breath that slips between Joe’s holy lips.

And as he moves, Joe recites the poem that Nicky had heard lifetimes ago, on the floor of their first home together, the words washing over him like a baptismal font until he shudders in the arms of his beloved: 

_I die of love for him, perfect in every way,_

_Lost in the strains of wafting music._

_My eyes are fixed upon his delightful body._

_And I do not wonder at his beauty._

_His waist is a sapling, his face a moon,_

_And loveliness rolls off his rosy cheek_

_I die of love for you, but keep this secret:_

_The tie that binds us is an unbreakable rope._

_How much time did your creation take, O angel?_

_So what! All I want is to sing your praises._

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading <3
> 
> I actually have a whole series of these planned out on my google drive where the theme of "misconceptions" is dealt with : misconceptions about Nicky being the little spoon, for instance, misconceptions about immortality and cynicism, Booker's misconceptions about the nature of their relationship (aka he thinks it's just sexual/release, and ... he is quickly corrected)
> 
> Please, please, please let me know what you think /if you'd like this little verse to be expanded! Thank you again for reading, and happy almost Saturday!
> 
> (final note, the title of the fic comes from Richard Siken. The full quote is  
>  _“We have not touched the stars,  
>  nor are we forgiven, which brings us back  
> to the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,  
> not from the absence of violence, but despite  
> the abundance of it.”_


End file.
